Case Study
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Migrating hundreds of thousands of pages, re-platforming and extending for the leading composable AI integration platform
From Storyblok to Drupal
We are the Storyblok to Drupal migration experts
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Challenges with Storyblok
Key pain points
Storyblok is not our first recommendation for a headless CMS. The product looks polished, but documentation sprawl makes initial setup harder than it should be, and non-technical editors routinely get lost navigating spaces, stories, and nested components.
Pricing is the bigger issue. Extra locales are $20/month each, extra seats are $15/month each, and custom roles, SSO, and the GraphQL API are all gated behind the custom-priced Premium and Elite plans. Teams on Growth ($99/month) often end up on Growth Plus ($349/month) not because they want the extra features, but because they hit an API request or locale limit.
You'll also lean on third-party integrations for a lot of ordinary tasks, which means more code paths to maintain. Webhook behaviour has changed between releases without clear deprecation notices. It's not a broken platform, it's just not a plug-and-play one.
Customisation can take effort
Storyblok can do almost anything, but sometimes the “how” involves developer time, CLI commands, or manual tweaking. Great control, just not always plug-and-play.
Some integrations need extra work
For things like CRMs or complex platforms, you’ll likely build the integration instead of installing it. Expect a bit more engineering.
Slower editing
Real-time previews are great, but large pages or heavy components can load slowly. Occasionally, the editor UI feels less intuitive than the rest of the platform.
Asset management isn’t perfect
Renaming assets, bulk editing, or cleaning libraries can take longer than expected. It is not streamlined like the rest of the system.
Permissions are fixed
Roles are predefined. For smaller teams, that’s perfectly fine. Bigger teams may want more granular access controls than Storyblok currently offers.
Pricing jumps with scale
You get a free tier, but some advanced features sit behind higher plans. It’s worth it for projects if you want to pay more; just something teams should budget for early.
Benefits of Drupal
Key advantages
We'll give credit where it's due: Drupal is a serious CMS for serious projects. If you're building a government portal, a university website, or a massive multilingual platform that needs to serve content in 24 languages, Drupal is genuinely hard to beat. Its content modeling is incredibly deep, its permissions system is enterprise-grade, and its multilingual capabilities are arguably the best in the open-source CMS world. The European Commission runs on it for a reason.
Where Drupal really shines is in complex, structured content architectures. You can model relationships between content types, build granular taxonomies, and set up editorial workflows that would make other CMS platforms weep. If your content team has 50 editors across multiple departments with different access levels, Drupal handles that without breaking a sweat. It's also one of the few traditional CMS platforms that has genuinely embraced decoupled architecture, so you can use it as a headless backend with a modern frontend framework if you want.
The community is smaller than WordPress but significantly more technical. Drupal developers tend to be proper engineers, and the ecosystem reflects that. Module quality is generally higher, security patches are taken seriously, and the project has strong governance. If you're in an enterprise or government context where compliance, accessibility, and security auditing matter, Drupal is a well-trodden path.
That said, we'd only recommend Drupal for projects that genuinely need its power. If you're building a marketing site or a blog, you're using a sledgehammer to hang a picture frame. Talk to us first, and we'll figure out if Drupal is actually the right fit or if you've been sold on it by someone who bills by the hour.
Exceptional content modeling
Drupal's entity and field system lets you build deeply structured, relational content architectures that most CMS platforms can only dream of. Complex taxonomies, references, and custom types are all first-class citizens.
Best-in-class multilingual support
With over 90 languages available out of the box and proper translation workflows baked in, Drupal is the gold standard for multilingual sites. No plugins, no hacks, just native support that actually works.
Granular permissions and workflows
The access control system is absurdly detailed. You can lock down roles, content types, fields, and editorial workflows with a precision that enterprise clients genuinely need and other platforms struggle to match.
Viable headless architecture
Drupal's JSON:API and GraphQL modules make it a legitimate headless CMS option, letting you pair a robust content backend with a modern frontend framework like Next.js or Nuxt.
Strong security track record
The Drupal security team is proactive and well-organized. Security advisories are clear, patches are timely, and the community takes vulnerabilities seriously, which matters a lot in government and enterprise contexts.
Open source with no vendor lock-in
You own your data, your code, and your hosting. There's no monthly SaaS bill that scales with your content volume, and you can move between hosting providers without rewriting anything.
Common questions
Storyblok to Drupal migration FAQs
Answers to the most common questions about Storyblok to Drupal migration
What are the best Storyblok alternatives?
Sanity is the alternative we recommend most often. It offers deeper content modelling, real-time collaboration, and a pricing model that doesn't spike when you add features. Contentful is another option if you want a mature ecosystem, though it's pricier. For teams that loved Storyblok's visual editor, Sanity's Presentation tool now provides a similar live preview experience. We've migrated several Storyblok projects to Sanity, and the feedback from both editors and developers has been positive.
How much does Storyblok cost?
Storyblok has a Starter plan at $0 with 1 seat, 2 locales, and 100K API requests. The Growth plan is $99/month for 5 seats, 1M API requests, and 2 locales. Growth Plus is $349/month for 15 seats, 4M API requests, and 10 locales. Extra seats are $15/month each, extra locales $20/month, extra traffic $75/250GB. Premium and Elite are custom pricing and unlock SSO, custom roles, and the GraphQL API. Teams often outgrow the Growth plan on locales or API volume rather than features, which forces a $250/month jump.
Does Storyblok have a visual editor?
Yes, and it's one of the best in the headless CMS space. You see real-time changes as you edit, directly on your site preview. It's the main reason many teams pick Storyblok. That said, Sanity now offers a comparable experience through its Presentation tool, which gives you live visual editing with more flexibility in content modelling. If the visual editor is your primary reason for choosing Storyblok, it's worth comparing both before committing.
Can I migrate from Storyblok to another CMS?
Yes. We export your stories, components, and assets through Storyblok's API, then restructure everything for the target platform. Storyblok's component-based content model actually maps well to Sanity's block system. Most migrations take 3-5 weeks. The main challenge is handling Storyblok's nested component structure and translating field-level localization to the new platform's approach. We keep your site running on Storyblok throughout, so there's zero downtime during the switch.
Is Storyblok good for large websites?
It works for mid-size sites but starts showing strain at enterprise scale. The API has performance limitations when fetching deeply nested content, and the pricing jumps between tiers are steep. Teams with 50+ pages and multiple locales often find themselves on the Growth Plus plan ($349/month) or pushed toward Premium sooner than expected, especially because custom roles and SSO only appear on enterprise tiers. For large-scale projects, we typically recommend Sanity instead. Its GROQ query language handles complex content relationships more efficiently, and pricing scales more predictably.
How do I migrate a website from Drupal?
We export your content, taxonomy, user data, and media from Drupal's database, then restructure everything for the target platform. Most Drupal migrations we handle move to Sanity or a headless setup with Next.js. The timeline depends on how many content types, custom modules, and Views you're running. A typical mid-size site takes 4-8 weeks. The hardest part is usually untangling custom module logic and rebuilding it in a modern stack.
What are the best Drupal alternatives?
For enterprise projects that need structured content and granular permissions, Sanity is our top recommendation. It matches Drupal's content modelling depth without the PHP overhead or the shrinking talent pool. For simpler sites that were on Drupal because someone chose it 10 years ago, WordPress or even Webflow might be enough. The right alternative depends on whether you actually need Drupal's power or just inherited it.
How do I migrate from Drupal 7 to a modern CMS?
Drupal 7 reached end-of-life, so this is urgent for many teams. Rather than migrating to Drupal 10 (which is essentially a rebuild anyway), most of our clients choose to move to a headless CMS instead. We extract your Drupal 7 content using Drush and custom migration scripts, then map it to the new platform's schema. The frontend gets rebuilt in Next.js or a similar framework. It's a bigger project than a version upgrade, but you end up with a system that's actually maintainable long-term.
How much does a Drupal migration cost?
It varies wildly based on content volume, custom modules, and frontend complexity. A small Drupal site with 500 pages might cost $15,000-$30,000 to migrate. Enterprise Drupal sites with thousands of pages, custom workflows, and multilingual content can run $50,000-$150,000+. The honest truth is that Drupal migrations are expensive because the platform is complex. But the ongoing savings from reduced hosting costs, easier maintenance, and cheaper developer rates usually justify the investment within 12-18 months.
Is Drupal still worth using in 2026?
Only if your project genuinely needs what Drupal offers, meaning deep content modelling, granular permissions, and multilingual support at scale. For government and large institutional sites, it still makes sense. For everything else, the shrinking developer pool, high maintenance costs, and painful upgrade cycles make it hard to justify. We've moved many teams off Drupal who were paying $200+/hour for specialized developers when a modern headless setup would have served them better at a fraction of the ongoing cost.
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